


Something

by sessrumnir



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Friends to Lovers, Living Together, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 09:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15660003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sessrumnir/pseuds/sessrumnir
Summary: Ryan moves in with Shane and Sara for a few weeks when his roommate leaves the country. They realize that works better than they thought it would.





	Something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MPhoenix7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MPhoenix7/gifts).



> hey friends, this was a prompt offered by the incredible [MPhoenix7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MPhoenix7) (@i-am-ghost-proof-baby on tumblr) when I reached a milestone and asked folks for drabble prompts. I clearly don't know what drabble means because this has 2k words but listen..,, I missed my OT3.

There was something about Ryan, Shane knew. A something with a capital S.

It wasn’t anything that would normally stand out. They had been friends for years and that Something had always been there, unnoticed, sometimes noticed, more often than not simply overlooked.

One day, Ryan said, “Hey, remember that Ireland thing?”

To what Shane said: “What thing? The Great Famine?”

“ _ No _ ,” Ryan guffawed. “The Dave in Ireland thing. The my-friend-and-roommate-moving-to-Ireland thing?”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I remember.” 

“It’s happening. I think I’m moving back to mom and dad’s while I figure this out.”

That was the start. The spark that set things in motion. Shane had an intelligence that was above average, or so his mother liked to say and his father to lament. Not that he acknowledged it very often, or thought about it, really, but he had. So merely hours later he brought the topic to Sara.

“Hey, what do you think about Ryan moving in for a while?”

Sara, focused on her planner, crossing things out and sticking the pen in her hair buns, merely said, “Mm?”

“Moving in with us, I mean. His buddy is going to Ireland, after all.”

At that, Sara looked up. “Dave? Oh no, do you think he’s taking The Last of Us with him?”

“I think he’s taking everything with him and that includes Ryan’s ability to pay the absurd rent of his apartment.”

“Oh.” Sara thought for a second. “Well, we have more than enough space. I wouldn’t mind.”

“Me neither,” Shane agreed.

* * *

 

From there on, it was a matter of weeks until Ryan finally made the last trip from the car to their 3rd floor apartment. He was sweating profusely after refusing to let either Sara or Shane carry anything that weighted more than a backpack up the stairs, tank top glued to his well-defined torso. Sara, holding Ryan’s portable fan, and Shane, carrying Ryan’s new guitar on his shoulder, tried not to stare.

“I’m trying to figure out if  _ mi casa, su casa _ is Italian or Spanish,” said Sara as the three of they shuffled rather lazily from the living room to Ryan’s new room.

“The intention is what matters. Thanks again, guys. I swear I’ll stay out of your way.”

Shane and Sara exchanged an amused look. Shane said, “You don't need to.”

“And I’ll be out of your hair before you can say ‘shut up, Ryan’.” Ryan added, partly ignoring him.

Both rolled their eyes, unplanned but with perfect timing. Sara said, “You’re talking like you’re a very bad-behaved puppy. And we love puppies, just to be clear.”

Ryan laughed, “Well, soon as I’m out you’ll have your soon-to-be-cinema room back.”

* * *

 

The first day, Ryan was out of bed and gone before either of them had woken up. They didn’t ask, because hey, privacy, but they saw a freshly showered Ryan coming into work with his gym bag slung over one shoulder. Then they left together in Ryan’s car--or rather, Shane and Ryan did. Sara was out shooting for a video.

“So, at what time did you wake up today?” Shane asked.

“Uh… 6-ish?”

“Jesus Christ, Ryan...  _ Why _ _?_ ”

Ryan laughed, and there. The Something. The ease and glow of Ryan laughing, comfortably, happily. Shane stared at him for a second too long, trying to understand what exactly he was looking at. 

“--want to wake you and Sara, so I had breakfast there,” Ryan had been saying. “Well, not  _ there _ , but nearby. The place is great and it serves Cuban coffee, too, so,” he kissed his fingers in admiration.

“Well, don’t be an idiot tomorrow, I can cook you breakfast.”

“Nah, it’s fine.”

“It’s etiquette. You gotta accept it when the host’s offering you food. What would Martha say?”

Ryan pointed an accusatory finger at him, laughing, “Hey, don’t bring my mom into this!”

“Oh but I will bring her into this. She’ll want my skin to decorate the patio for your dogs if she finds out her son is starving under my roof!”

Ryan was trying, but failing, to speak in between bursts of laughter. They agreed on a modest breakfast at 7:00 am.

When Ryan woke up at 6:55 am, he was greeted by the smell of scrambled eggs. 

“This isn’t the right one, Shane, this is from March,” Sara was saying as Ryan walked into the kitchen. She was looking at her phone, glasses sliding down her nose, hair all cute curls and sticking ends. 

“Maybe it’s in my inbox, I’ll have to check. Hey, good morning, Ry guy. Eggs?”

“Sure.” Ryan sat down and stared at the mugs in front of him. Sara’s was a Star Wars one he had seen before. In his place at the table there was a polka dot one, purple and white. ("The closest I had to the purple and yellow, sorry.") Shane’s he recognized, too: his favorite mug with some obscure Frasier quote that Ryan always forgot the words to. 

A plate of pristine scrambled eggs slipped in front of him.

“Slept well?” Sara asked Ryan as Shane waltzed back to the oven. 

“I did, yeah, thanks. Man, these eggs are insanely good.”

From the oven, Shane took off an imaginary hat. Sara propped her chin on a hand, watching him with love written all over her face. 

“What would we be without you, babe?”

“Yeah, baby, what?” Ryan joined in, also leaning his head on his hands.

Shane turned back in time to see that scene before the other two broke into laughter, Sara telling Ryan all about his cooking skills that Ryan barely ever got to witness on movie nights at their apartment. 

There was Something, that’s for certain. Shane had physical evidence of it now by the way his heart warmed up all of a sudden in his chest.

* * *

 

One week in, and Sara found a partner for all the work she was always bringing home with her.

“It’s Saturday,” Shane reminded them on his way out of the kitchen with a glass of water in hand. “In case the two mad people I live with forgot.”

“Don’t give me that, big guy, you’re the one always stuck at home on Saturday eveni—”

“IT IS SATURDAY.” Sara half-shouted. She looked up from her laptop, at Shane. “Fuck. I forgot to pay the electric bill, and it was due Friday. Yesterday. Shit. Shitshitshitshit.”

“It’s alright, here, lemme…” Shane took his phone out of his pocket as he sat down on the couch.

Ryan watched the exchange from his place sat beside Sara at the table. He then pulled something up on his laptop that was also open in front of him.

“Knowing full well how that is none of my business, I’m still gonna suggest this because it honestly saved my ass when I was living with Dave. He’s a great guy and nurse but would’ve had us evicted like, our first year in that apartment if I let him deal with our bills, seriously--Here, this was our last budget spreadsheet.”

Shane chuckled from the couch, “Oh Sara sweetheart, you’re in for a treat with the infamous Bergara Spreadsheets—”

“No, hang on, this is interesting.” Sara interrupted him with a finger and an apologetic flying kiss afterwards. She turned Ryan’s laptop closer to her. “You kept all your finances here?”

“The ones we shared, yeah. Bills, groceries, and stuff. I had an app for groceries too, like, for making the list and so on but we didn’t cook all that much and basically only bought toilet paper and alcohol…”

Sara was looking at Ryan like he had just told her the secrets of the universe.

She turned to Shane, “Can we keep him?”

Both Ryan and Shane exploded in laughter. Well, Ryan did. Shane laughed but he was smiling to Sara as if to say  _ yeah, I feel you _ .

* * *

 

They had very little free time the second week. Ryan stayed at his parents over the weekend. Sara sighed a lot during that weekend. Shane put out the polka dot mug for breakfast those two days before realizing his mistake.

* * *

 

The third week, they went grocery shopping.

Or rather, Shane did. He called Ryan from Trader Joe’s and asked him if he was almost done at the gym. Ryan said he was. Shane asked if he could meet him at the store.

“Sara got caught in post,” Shane explained when they walked inside, face-first into the much welcomed chilly air inside the store. 

“So you needed a ride back.”

“And opinions, yes.” 

Grocery shopping with Ryan was as different as it could possibly be from grocery shopping with Sara. She tried to fit things into their budget. Ryan tried to fit things into his stomach and into his diet.

“Are you sure we need that much noodle?” He asked Ryan.

“You’re right. Maybe not. I’m thinking as a bachelor who’s also a terrible cook.” Ryan considered his own words for a second, then opened a smile. “Kinda forgot there that we have a chef at home.”

Maybe it was the compliment. Maybe it was the heat outside. But that Something suddenly turned into a Big Thing and Shane couldn’t do more than smile and run his eyes over the shelves. Yeah. Ryan definitely had Something about him.

* * *

 

Fourth week. Shane was starting to think of the new arrangement as the only logical arrangement. That was obvious, right?

They were sitting in front of the TV, Shane and Sara sharing their small couch. Ryan was sitting on a sea of pillows on the floor, resting his head against the couch, in the space between their legs. They were watching a rerun of NBC’s Hannibal. Or they had been. Sara had started playing with Ryan’s hair, running her nails gently on his scalp. After a few minutes of that, Ryan stopped moving, and Shane saw he had his eyes closed. 

“He fell asleep,” he whispered to Sara, although his face included the rather redundant  _ isn’t he cute? _

Sara smiled and continued to run her fingers through Ryan’s hair. “He must be tired. He was out all day looking.”

Looking for an apartment, they both knew. And because they both knew, the silence between them grew heavy. They were ignoring Mads Mikkelsen in order to mourn.

“I don’t want him to go,” said Sara, voicing what was implied in the mournful silence. “This is nice.”

Shane nodded. He was watching Sara’s hand and, hesitatingly, ran his fingers through Ryan’s hair once. Carefully, lovingly. Sara smiled and held his hand on hers. There was a splash of blood on the screen and they remembered to turn their attention back to it.

* * *

**> Ryan**

I think I found the place!  
Can you meet me there?  
Say, in the next hour? Would appreciate your input. I’ll send you the address.

_Fri Jun 17, 3:48pm_

 

It had been barely five weeks. Really, just days after that movie night. Shane forwarded the text to Sara with a :( emoji.

 

**> Sweetest**

:( tell him!!! ask him to stay. please??

_Fri Jun 17, 4:01pm_

 

The building was a nice one. Not  _ nice _ nice, but friendly. Small. Kinda distant from work, so Shane gathered that it was affordable. Or as affordable as anything can be in LA, really. 

“And there’s salsa classes every Wednesday night,” Ryan said as they walked into the tiny, bare apartment. “Two floors up. If that’s the safest thing the landlord has to say about this I can’t wait to find out what else is going on here.”

He let out a nervous laugh, but he was confident enough to know how to do this on his own, Shane surmised. Shane wasn’t there to tell him if he should or shouldn’t take that apartment. He watched as Ryan walked to the window, looking outside then back at him. “What do you think? Yay or nay?”

“I think you should stay with us,” Shane blurted out. The Something was more than a something. Ryan was… Ryan. That made perfect sense in his head, even though he knew that if he had to put it into words, it wouldn't make as much sense. And as he watched Ryan’s eyes go wide in surprise, he understood. The Something was more than  _ in _ Ryan, it was _about_ him. Them. _Between_ them. Between Shane and Ryan, and Sara and Ryan, and Shane, Sara, and Ryan. 

“What?” Ryan was smiling his nervous smile. “What do you mean?”

“Stay with us. With Sara and I.”

“Are you insane?” Ryan asked, rather shallowly. He was laughing, and Shane started laughing, too, because it  _ was _ kinda insane, but hey. The kind of insane you wanna have in your life sometimes. 

“Maybe. Sara said please. And included a sad emoji, which I think you should take into consideration.”

“She wants me too? To move in, I mean. She wants me to move in too?” Ryan added that last bit rather quickly, and awkwardly.

“She does. I wouldn’t say just in one sense, but that’s a conversation for another day. We just… really like having you there? I don’t know. It makes sense.”

It did. It was just one month, and Ryan had barely more than his bed and some clothes in the apartment, but it fit. Like their apartment had always had an extra space and that space, they were just now realizing, was Ryan-shaped.

“I’d pay my third of the rent.”

“Sara already pays two thirds.”

“Oh. There you go, then. We can pay a third each. And I can, uh, do the laundry for all of us. Or something. Help out, because I sure as shit can’t cook.”

Shane thought he’d never stop smiling. “Sure. We can go over the details later, preferably with Sara present. Then it’s a yes?”

“I guess it is,” Ryan giggled, nervous, giddy, excited. He seemed happier, lighter on the shoulders. Definitely bigger than that empty apartment and its depressing gray walls. “Until you and Sara get tired of me, of course.”

“At least until we can help you find something better than salsa town,” Shane said in a tone that was too soft to really mean it.

 

Four weeks and two days, and Sara was home when they got back from that apartment, and her eyes were big and apprehensive until Shane gave her a tiny nod. She sighed as if she had been holding her breath this whole time, and threw her hands up with a happy smile and said maybe in a voice higher than her usual pitch, “Welcome home!”

When she ran towards Ryan and gave him the 5’4 equivalent of a bear hug, Shane caught a glimpse of Ryan’s big, nervous smile and rested a hand on Ryan’s shoulders.

“Welcome home, buddy.”

And from then on, the Something that was not a particular thing but a shared thing, much like a thread connecting Ryan to them, only warmer, kinder, sweeter… was always there, ever-present. Shane didn’t question the others about it; Sara could feel it, too, and Ryan… Well, Ryan was at the center of it. Their personal sunshine, the piece that fit right into the puzzle of what Shane already thought was a pretty solid combination before, and now more than ever. And if Ryan got used to scrambled eggs in the morning, and if Sara got used to another pair of feet—sock-clad like hers—under the table, and if they eventually bought a bigger couch and a bigger bed for the master bedroom, well. That was just how it was. And that was something. 


End file.
